Recycle Crafting and Green Crafting

I'm a little behind on my crafty links for each day of the month, National Craft Month. It was a very busy weekend with spending the whole day Saturday at Crop for a Cause. I didn't get much done but I did have a lot of fun with my friends and I did win one silent auction of some kids scrapbooking supplies for my daughter.

While trying to think of what I wanted to share with you next I came across an article about taking used items and making them into unique art items to sell. They called it Junk Style Art. Recently I have been collecting old sweaters (mostly wool ones to felt) and any unique pieces of clothing to create something new. I have done some re-fashion before and wrote about one of the items in this article: How to Re-fashion a Kid's Sweatshirt. I started researching sites to give me some ideas and found the ones below.

Try these sites for finding ideas on recycle crafting or being a green crafter:

• Wardrobe Re-Fashion - You can pledge to re-fashion used clothing instead of buying new but it's a great source of inspiration.
• Crafting a Green World - Eco-friendly craft projects.
• Dollar Store Crafts - Emphasis is using supplies from a dollar store or dollar section of a store but you can find recycled ideas like this Recycled Plastic Bottle Chandelier.
• Recycled Crafts at Craft Gossip.com - Very cute stuff!

Have fun exploring and getting inspiration.

BurdaStyle

Going forward with my crafty site for everyday of National Craft Month I have selected BurdaStyle for today. It's a community of sewers who mostly create their own patterns from Burda's collection or their own then share them with the community. Burda calls it "open source sewing." You don't have to worry about copyrights here and you get a heck of a lot of inspiration from everyone's creativity. And if you don't sew clothes, don't worry they have non-apparel craft projects too.

How to Re-fashion a Kid's Sweatshirt

For some reason my dear daughter does not like to wear a plain T-shirt or sweatshirt. They are just too plain and boy-like. So, she has to have something a little more fashionable. The problem is that fashionable shirts can cost more than I want to spend. I found an alternative. I purchase gently used shirts at thrift stores and jazz them up like the one in the photo.

For this particular shirt I used an iron-on applique that I purchased on clearance earlier this year. After ironing it on I used a narrow zigzag stitch in a matching thread. I wanted to make sure this would last through washings. Then I used a Gemagic Rhinestone Setter (similar to the Bedazzler) to set some colored rhinestones around the applique.

This is such an easy project to do. If you don't have the rhinestone setter you could purchase some metallic fabric paints and simply add dots around the applique but make sure you do not use fabric softener before applying the paint.